Instagram Brings New Shopping Features To Stories And Explore

Photo: Instagram

The shopping experience on Instagram is intensifying. The company revealed in a recent blog post that it is launching two new Shopping features in Shopping In Stories and Shopping In Explore, which will make it easier for brands to sell products and users to purchase them.

Shopping In Stories

With Shopping In Stories, brands can add Shopping Stickers to their Stories posts. When a user clicks on the Shopping Sticker, he or she will be taken directly to that specific product, where they can find out more information about the product as well as purchase it with ease.

The Shopping In Stories feature was previously available to a selected number of brands, however, businesses in 46 countries will now have access to it.

“More than 400 million accounts come to Stories every day to feel closer to their favorite accounts. And with one-third of the most-viewed stories coming from businesses, we’re excited to see how Shopping in Stories enable brands to tell an even deeper story about what’s behind their products,” the company stated.

Shopping In Explore

A Shopping topic channel is also being rolled out in Explore, which was redesigned earlier this summer. As one would expect, the Shopping channel focuses on Shopping posts featuring products from brands that a user follows and products from brands that they might like based on their interests.

Photo: Instagram

The new features come shortly after reports surfaced that the company is working on a standalone Shopping app. While it has yet to confirm or deny the reports, it’s clear that Instagram sees value in just improving the Shopping experience on the app but making it more of a priority.

If IGTV, which is available both in the native Instagram app and as its own standalone app, is any indication, it’s likely that a standalone Shopping app will indeed be rolled out in the near future. Social media plays a huge role in what people decide to spend their money on so it makes perfect sense to take advantage of that.